


black sun (so fair, so cruel)

by MazelTovCocktail555



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Tattoo Parlor, Angst with a Happy Ending, Badass Rey, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Ben Solo is a Mess, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Minor Armitage Hux/Rose Tico, Minor Poe Dameron/Finn, Size Difference, Slow Burn, Tattoo Artist Ben Solo, Tattoos, fuck it ill add tags later when the sexy time happens, prospective art student rey, rey is kind of feral
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:48:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23714662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MazelTovCocktail555/pseuds/MazelTovCocktail555
Summary: Rey was used to grizzled men calling her “doll” or “baby.” She didn’t like it, in fact, it usually filled her with rage. You don’t know me. I’m not your baby, she’d think. But for some reason, the venomous way the word “sweetheart” curls off this man’s tongue hurts.Rey's working herself to death in two dead end jobs. But she accepts it because she has to. That is until Kylo fucking Ren walks into the diner and demands she apprentice at his tattoo parlor.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 31
Kudos: 142





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first fic. Ever. Also the first creative writing I've done since highschool. I've been reading fanfic since I was 11 but I guess it took quarantine to throw me over the edge. 
> 
> Comments and suggestions would be very much appreciated given that I have no idea what I'm doing and don't have a beta. Also I've spent the last year learning how to write like a lawyer (i.e. like an asshole) so bear with me, it may take a few chapters to get in the swing of things.
> 
> Anyways, you can find me at https://mazeltovcocktail555.tumblr.com/

It’s a slow night at the diner, the kind of night where the only people eating are truck drivers stopping in for a cup of coffee and college students looking for a late-night snack. On these nights, Rey could sit down behind the bar and let her feet rest for a moment. She could grab a lightly used menu, one with only a few dark rings left behind by a mug of coffee, and draw for a while, letting the quiet din of forks and knives lull her into a near meditative state. She’d use the cheap ballpoint pens the wait staff uses to write down orders, and let herself fall into a familiar trance. 

It’s the kind of trance that makes Rey forget herself. She forgets her aching feet, swollen from a day of working at Plutt’s garage. She forgets the loneliness she feels coming home to an empty apartment, her Grandfather’s presence tidily packed away into boxes hidden at the back of the hall closet. She forgets the bills reading “OVERDUE” and “FINAL NOTICE” on her kitchen table. She forgets that on nights like these where the diner is near empty, her tips will fall far short of paying the bills. Still, she draws. Tracing lines across the page, watching the ink flow. 

Rey’s brow furrows in concentration as her pen outlines the mouth of a roaring lion on her make-shift scratch paper. She imagines its jowls, dark and bloody, its expression fierce. Sometimes Rey would draw her friends, but those nights were rare. Mostly, Rey draws from memories of a long-faded story book filled with myths and monster, the only thing she has left from a childhood almost forgotten. From the days before she was left behind.

She draws until she hears the jingle of the bell. It’s a sharp reminder that she has work to do. She looks up to see three people walk in.

The first to enter is the tallest woman Rey has ever seen. She’s dressed coolly in a black tank with a red leather jacket, her hair in a neat undercut. Her platinum locks reflect almost white in the fluorescent lights of the diner, creating the illusion of a halo. Along her ear is a neat line of piercings, and Rey can see a stud adorning her brow. To Rey, she looks like a modern-day Atlanta, a Grecian hero come to lay ruin upon the men who would try and defy her. Even so, Rey can’t help but think that something about the curve of her mouth suggests kindness.

The second to enter is a man, hair a bright red shock against his gaunt skin. Unlike the woman, his ears have large black gauges, and his hair is slicked back in a look that could be called severe. His dress is more formal, with dress pants and a sleek charcoal vest atop a crisp white dress shirt. Despite the primness of his clothes, his sleeves are rolled up, exposing brightly colored tattoos along his forearms. Koi fish.

Despite the pair’s dramatic appearances, Rey only gives them a cursory glance. For as soon as she sees their third companion, her eyes can’t help but lock. 

He’s huge. It’s not that he’s impossibly tall or visibly muscled (though he is both of those things), but in his all black clothes he looms like a mountain behind his friends. Still Rey can’t help but wonder how it would feel to stand right in front of him, craning her neck up to stare into his face. 

She wonders how small she would feel to be in front of such a man. It wouldn’t feel like standing in front of Plutt. No, standing in front of Plutt feels like being surrounded by something unsafe, something dirty. But standing in front of this man, fuck, standing in front of this man would make her feel vulnerable she can’t help but think. Vulnerable and small in a way she hasn’t felt in a long time. 

“Fuck I’m hungry.”

The ginger scowls; his brow furrows as if he’s trying to make food materialize with the mere power of his brain. 

The words jolt Rey out of her reverie, and she stands abruptly, moving to show the group to a table. But just as she’s about to step towards them, Rose materializes, cheerily escorting them to a booth near the back of the diner. 

Rey sits back down, almost disappointed despite her aching body telling her that a break is well deserved. Over the hum of the diner’s ancient heating system, she hears Rose welcome them to the diner, happily telling them about the specials. The red head and blonde have their backs to Rey, but the man with the dark, windswept hair sits facing the entrance to the diner, unwittingly giving Rey the ability to continue her hungry surveillance.

His features are odd, and on their own any one of them would have looked like an anomaly, but together they coalesced into something striking. Not quite handsome in any traditional sense, but beautiful. Almost hauntingly so.

His eyes are like the coals left after a blazing fire: penetrating, dark, and burning with intensity. His lips look like they’re made for sinning, thick and pink, and he has a neatly trimmed, dark goatee which stands out against the paleness of his features. 

His hair is black and thick. It brushes his shoulders and is messy in a way that suggests it might be intentional. Rey wonders how it would feel to drag her fingers through his hair, wonders how that wicked mouth would feel as he pressed up against her, how it would feel as his huge hands grabbed her sides and – 

Suddenly the man’s eyes shift and are staring back into hers. Rey feels pinned by his gaze, but forces herself to look away, cheeks blushing at having been caught. Glancing down at the counter, Rey pretends to look at the menu-turned-scratch-paper in front of her. After a moment or so, she risks a peek up from her lashes, and finds the man’s attention shifted to Rose as she inquired about his drink order.

Rey turns her gaze back to the menu, wanting to shift her focus away from the man but finding herself unable to concentrate on her drawing. Her pen flips nervously in her fingers. The lion she had been drawing looks almost cartoonish to her eyes now. She craves a new subject, and she knows just the person.

With no one else in the diner and Rose taking the only customers’ orders, she figures she might as well sketch the man. She usually avoids drawing customers. It feels illicit somehow. Drawing people without permission. Drawing customers without permission. But tonight, Rey can’t help but indulge.

She glances furtively at the man as she begins to trace his features onto the menu. She wishes she could get a closer look, knows that the angles and planes of his face deserve her close attention to be properly rendered. Even so, her face still feels warm from when he caught her looking earlier, and she’s hesitant to look up for more than a second before glancing back down at her paper.

Rey hears Rose come back behind the counter and looks up. Rose eyes the paper in front of Rey, her face splitting into a teasing grin.

“Oh, shut up,” Rey mumbles, moving her hand to cover the roughly sketched, but clearly recognizable face of the dark-haired man.

Rose snickers.

“If I’d known he was your type, I would’ve let you take the table.”

She looks over to the booth, her lips turning up into a smirk. She thinks to herself for a moment before adding, “Actually, I wouldn’t, that red head’s hot as hell.”

Rey squints at her, perplexed.

“What, I like gingers?”

Rey snorts and looks at her friend with fondness. Rey had met Rose a few years earlier when she had begun working at the diner. At the time, Rey was incredibly withdrawn, feeling the whiplash of having come to the States to start a life with her newly discovered Grandfather, only to months later be alone again when he died of a heart attack. The months with Obi had been some of the best in her entire life, with him encouraging her to come out of her shell and to take her art seriously. He even helped her send in an application to SAIC with promises that she could live with him while she studied art. But by the time her acceptance came, Obi was in the ground and the creditors were hounding her door. Her acceptance letter was shoved to the back of her closet, almost but not quite forgotten. 

It was only by chance that she stumbled into _Maz’s_ and found work at the diner. Maz was a good boss and let Rey take the night shift so that she could spend her days working long hours at Plutt’s. She didn’t even mind that Rey used twice the number of pens as everyone else, and was happy to let Rey eat a full meal on her breaks. All around, it was a good gig, and Rey was thankful for the diner even on the nights when tips were low, and customers were sleazy.

Maz wasn’t the only one who made the diner a kind of home. When Rey started working at _Maz’s_ , Rose and Finn made the executive decision to adopt Rey into their little family. It wasn’t what Rey had imagined a family would look like when she was a child bouncing between shitty foster homes, but it was beautiful all the same.

“—so do you want to?”

_Shit._

She hasn’t heard a word Rose had said, and slowly asks, “Uh, do I want to what?”

Rose gives her a look of exasperation.

“Do you want to split the table? Earth to space cadet.” 

Rey rolls her eyes, but then gives Rose a serious look. 

“You sure?”

“Yeah, no problem. You can deliver the food and maybe refill some drinks. That way we can both enjoy the eye candy.” Rose gives Rey a salacious but slightly ridiculous grin, and Rey can’t help but laugh and nod.

Rey thinks for a moment. She’s tired and her body aches, but the chance to get a close up view of the handsome giant is more than enough to sway her.

“Sure, why not?”

Rose smiles and walks off to deliver the table their drinks. She mouths “You can get the next round” as she saunters away.

Rey smiles, but can’t help but wonder if the offer to split the table came not out of her friend’s desire to commiserate over attractive men, but because Rose knew how strapped for cash Rey had been. Maz was as generous as she could be, but tip money is what paid Rey’s bills. Either way, she’s grateful for the offer. 

Rey looks at her drawing, shading in the contours of the man’s aquiline nose, the sharp jut of his chin. She’s always liked drawing portraits, but she never feels as if she gets them quite right. Nonetheless, she admits to herself that the drawing in front of her is one of her better ones. At least, by menu-sketch standards.

Rose walks back to the counter and plops down next to Rey. Her drawing is temporarily forgotten as Rose begins a sexually frustrated tirade.

“Fuck he looks so buttoned up. I’d think he was up tight, but with tattoos like that I bet he’s a freak in bed.”

Rey shakes her head at her friends ridiculous fawning.

“If you’re so interested, why don’t you ask him for his mobile?”

“I will if you ask tall, dark and brooding the same.”

Rey shakes her head, again feeling herself begin to blush.

“I’m not interested in dating, you know that.”

 _More like can’t afford it._ Still, it’s as good of an excuse as Rey can think of.

Rose raises an eyebrow.

“Sure you’re not, you just draw every hot guy who walks through the door.”

Rey stammers for a moment before collecting herself.

“He has interesting…features. They make for a good study.”

Rose guffaws and grins at Rey with a knowing look.

“I know one feature you’d like to stud-" Rey cuts Rose off with a slap to her arm and Rose laughs good naturedly. Before she can continue teasing Rey, the ding of a bell goes off. 

“Order up,” Rey hears Finn call from the back.

Rey gets up from the counter, running her hands up and down her apron in an attempt to straighten herself. She looks down at her sunflower covered shirt, and feels almost childish as she approaches the trio at the table. They’re _cool_ in a way Rey has never been, in a way Rey has never had the funds to be. Even so, she walks towards the table head held high, carefully balancing three dishes piled high with food.

She gets to the table and looks down, trying to look at the man to her right without making it obvious that she is. She’s not planning on asking him out, but she’ll be damned if she embarrasses herself.

“Uh hello. Who got the eggs benedict?” The blonde woman nods her head with a smile and sticks a hand out to grab the plate from Rey.

“And the combo platter?” 

“That would be me,” says the red head excitedly. He looks at the food as if it was made of gold. If nothing else, she thinks he’ll probably tip well. 

Rey finally turns her face to the dark-haired man, who’s staring at her with an intensity that should make her uncomfortable. Instead, Rey feels her breath speed up.

_Shit, he either wants to fuck me or kill with eyes like that._

“And I take it the burger is yours then…?”

The man gives no sign of having heard her. 

_Ok, maybe it’s the later._

Ignoring the man’s failure to respond and trying not to blush harder than she already is, she places the burger in front of him. The man snaps out of his staring, his face turning towards the plate and his huge hands moving to grab a napkin. Shocked she hadn’t notices earlier, Rey sees that he had taken off his leather jacket, exposing muscled forearms covered with ink.

Embedded in his skin is a drawing of a falcon, its chest pierced by an arrow as it flies across his left arm. The tattoo is black and grey, with only a hint of red which drips out of from the breast of the bird. The red stands out against his arm like rubies. It’s breathtaking, but almost sad.

“Oh!” 

The man’s eyes flash up to hers. He frowns.

Rey tries to cover herself with a bravado she doesn’t feel, realizing that the noise she’d made could be construed as less than polite.

“Oh, just your tattoo. It’s really beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I was impressed by the artistry and-”

“What would you know about artistry?”

His voice is deep and rumbling and clearly dripping with disdain. 

Rey locks eyes with the man. Unlike the first time their eyes, this time she doesn’t look away, even as she hears the distaste rolling off his tongue. 

Rey narrows her eyes.

“More than you might think. Anyways, I meant it as a compliment, it’s a good tattoo. I was just wondering what it meant.”

If it’s possible his eyes become even darker, as if she had deeply offended him for daring to voice the inquiry.

“It’s none of your business, sweetheart.” 

Rey was used to grizzled men calling her “doll” or “baby.” She didn’t like it, in fact, it usually filled her with rage. _You don’t know me. I’m not your baby,_ she’d think. But for some reason, the venomous way the word “sweetheart” curls off this man’s tongue hurts. Maybe it was because she could tell she’d find his voice sexy under other circumstances. Maybe it’s because how clearly the fury radiates from him. It’s reminiscent of the way heat radiates from a bonfire, and it burns her.

The man’s eyes glance quickly back towards the plate in front of him.

“Anyways I ordered this with the onions well-done.” 

He pushes the plate out into the middle of the table and turns away from her, as if dismissing a servant. Whatever anger he was radiating is replaced with pure apathy.  
Rey glares at the man but picks up the plate all the same, biting her tongue as she moves to turn away from the table. As much as she wants to tell the asshole to go fuck himself, she knows she’ll be scolded by Maz if she does. Still, she can’t help but thinks it might be worth it. 

“Yes, your highness.”

She spins fully, not waiting to see his expression as she almost bolts from the table. In her head, Rey is screaming obscenities. She knows Maz would be less than thrilled at her for being rude to a customer, but she also thinks the old woman would be almost proud of her for standing up to that kind of prick. Maz ran a tight ship, but she didn’t put up with customers picking on wait staff.  
With a rattle, Rey places the tray down in the window between the dining room and the kitchen. 

“What’s wrong this time, Peanut?” Finn appears at the window, his aggravated face morphing into worry as he takes in the sight of Rey. 

“Apparently the onions aren’t well done enough.” 

Finn looks at the burger with confusion.

“I made them well done. What, does he want them burned?”

Rey shrugs.

“I guess so.”

Finn sighs and takes the burger back into the kitchen. 

As Finn retreats from sight, Rey feels her anger deflate. In its place is pure unadulterated exhaustion. Her feet feel like they’re attached to anchors as Rey shuffles over to Rose, collapsing back into her chair behind the counter. Rose looks up, concerned.

“That bad?”

Rey tries to be quiet as she spits out the words, “He’s such an ass.”

“All the pretty ones are.”

Rey groans and Rose chuckles, amused by her friend’s melodramatics. Usually Finn was the dramatic one of the trio, while Rey was the one who rarely complained. She’d seen too much and worked too hard to bitch about minor things. But now, Rey felt the cruel weight of the day pressing against her chest with every breath 

Rose’s laugh fades the longer Rey sits there without responding.

“When was the last time you slept?”

Rey looks to the side not wanting to make eye contact.

“Uh, yesterday.” Rey hears Rose make a clucking sound in the back of her mouth, and can immediately tell that Rose doesn’t believe her. Still Rey doesn’t say anything, knowing she’ll only dig herself into a deeper hole.

“Look Rey, go home. There’s only this one table and we close in an hour anyways. Finn and I can lock up.”

“What about splitting the table?”

“Screw it, it’s three people. I doubt we’ll get anyone else in tonight. Go home, Rey.” 

Rey’s first instinct is to protest, after all, it was tip money. But after a moment she realizes that the aching in her limbs is almost excruciating. Rey’s a fighter. She’ll normally work until she passes out. But in the moment, she can tell that she’s only going to get in Rose’s way if she stays, or worse, that she’ll crack and pour a drink into his royal highness’s lap when she brings out his burger.  
Rey nods and takes off her apron. She sighs to herself, looking down at her hands as she folds the grease stained fabric. Her fingers shake as she tucks the apron into the box under the till. 

Finally, Rey grabs her bag from behind the counter, and walks out of the diner. She tries not to think about work the next day and all that she has left to do.  


* * *

She doesn’t look back to see a pair of dark eyes follow her out the door.

“Man, why do you have to be such a grump? They’re going to spit in our food next time we’re in here.” 

Hux grumbles his words between huge bites of food as Kylo looks on in vague disgust. 

“And fuck I want to come back, this is awesome.”

Kylo rolls his eyes.

“I asked for my onions well done, it’s not my fault they can’t follow a simple request.”

Phasma snorts and gives Kylo a look like he should know better.

“You always do this.”

“Do what?” 

Phasma looks at him expectantly. 

“Throw a hissy fit whenever anybody asks about your tattoo. For a tattoo artist you’d think you’d be nicer when people ask about it.”

Kylo wants to growl at her. He wants to leave and go back to his apartment. Mostly he wanted to yell at that waitress for asking about his tattoo. It’s none of her business what it fucking means. He wants to crowed her space as he screams, wants to watch her pretty mouth gasp as he pressed her against the wall and—

He stops the thought in its tracks.

“I don’t throw hissy fits.”

Phasma smirks at him.

“Sounded like a hissy fit to me.”

Kylo turns to stare out the window behind the booth, deciding to ignore his friends. They begin to chat with each other, quickly realizing that he’s in one of his “black moods.” 

Kylo turns away from the window and looks towards the door as he feels the cool night air rush into the diner. He watches the waitress rush out into the cool, Chicago night. He wonders where she’s going, if she’s going home to someone. He bets she is, thinking back to her cute freckles and hazel eyes. With her sunflower shirt and sun kissed face, she gave off the kind of innocent, girl-next-door vibe that Kylo can’t help but want to corrupt. 

But the moment she asked about his tattoo, Kylo snapped. 

Phasma was correct. Kylo should have had a better response when people asked him about his tattoos, but it had been a long day. One of his clients had no showed, and his mother had left a voicemail on his phone. A voicemail which he immediately deleted, unlistened to. 

And then the waitress had asked about the falcon.

His tattoos were like a diary of his life, a painful reminder of all the ways he had fucked up. When he had drawn them, he had been methodical with the details. He spent months making minute adjustments until they were perfect. When they were finally finished, he was only willing to trust Hux to render out his work on his skin. Even so, he came damn near close to tattooing himself out of the fear they’d come out less than perfect.

But while he loved his tattoos and was proud of them, nothing irked Kylo more than people asking him what they meant. He didn’t want to explain them to people. He didn’t want to explain that his tattoos were a form of self-flagellation, that he’d branded himself with his own mistakes. He didn’t want to explain to beautiful girls with sparkling eyes and _so_ many freckles what kind of monster he was. 

It wasn’t her business.

Kylo stews in his misery, feeling the day weigh down on him. He tried to turn Hux down when he said they should go out for dinner, but Phasma had insisted he come along, complaining that he’d stayed home the last several times they’d gone out. But now he was feeling a creeping ache in his temples and he wanted to go the fuck home.

“Fuck she’s cute. Think I have a chance?” Hux looks at Phasma with a grin, sheepishly nodding his head towards the remaining waitress behind the counter.

“You wish, you ginger bastard.”

Kylo stands up from the booth, putting on his jacket. He grabs a handful of bills from his wallet and shoves them on the table. 

“You going already?” Phasma looks up at him with a look that says she’s disappointed with him, but also not surprised by his early exit.

Kylo shrugs and looks away, trying not to meet her eyes. 

“I have an early appointment tomorrow.” 

He turns to leave trying to avoid further conversation, but stops when Hux asks, “What about your burger?”

Kylo sighs.

“I’ll ask for it to go.” 

Without another word, he walks towards the counter where the waitress is sitting. He can feel his friends staring at him. He knows he’s in a mood and acting like an ass, but they were the ones who forced him to go out. Even so, he berates himself for not being a bit more polite. He tells himself he’ll apologize in the morning at the shop, all the while knowing he’ll lash out the same way next time his family calls.

“I’d like my burger to go.” He says it bluntly as the waitress looks up at him confused. He only realizes afterward that he didn’t say “excuse me.” His mother would be appalled. 

“Uh sure. Just give me a minute to get it boxed up.” The girl—who Kylo acknowledges was cute, but not nearly as beautiful as her coworker—walks off to alert the kitchen. 

Kylo closes his eyes, feeling a throbbing behind his lids. He wants to hope that when he gets home, he’ll fall into a nice, dreamless sleep. But he can’t. In his bones, he knows that the nightmares will come regardless. And hope is a fiction Kylo has long since given up on.

Sighing he looks down to the counter. For a moment he doesn’t understand what he’s looking at, but when he realizes what it is his eyes widen. He seizes the piece of paper. 

Scrawled on the back of a clearly used menu is his face. It’s rough, but well done. It’s evident that the artist has an eye for detail. But it isn’t the skill that stops Kylo in his tracks. It’s his eyes staring back at him. They look sad in the way they do when Kylo looks at himself in the mirror. They look sad in the way Kylo thought he’d managed to hide from the world.

“Here’s your burger.”

Kylo startles as he hears the rustle of a plastic bag filled with his dinner being placed on the counter. He looks up at the girl with wondering eyes.

“Did you draw this?” He holds up the sketch. The waitress looks for a second and her eyes widen. She shakes her head briskly with clear alarm having realized what he’s holding.

“Oh no, sorry about that.” She tries to grab it back but Kylo steps back, keeping it from her hands.

_It’s mine._

“Then who drew this?”

The waitress says nothing, trying to shrug it off as if pretending it’s not a huge violation for someone to have drawn him without his permission. He should be angry, but mostly he just feels in the way he generally tries to suppress. 

He thinks back to the perky waitress he had berated for asking about his tattoos. Thinks back to her comments about “artistry.” And he doesn’t have to ask again. He knows who drew it.

Without saying another word, he steps back and walks from the counter and out the front door, sketch clutched in his fist. 

He’s halfway home before he realizes that he left his burger at the diner.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I'm back, sorry for the delay. Finals start this week and they're kicking my ass. Anyways, here's the chapter as promised!

When Rey leaves her shift at Plutt’s for the day, she’s pissed. 

Rey was used to Plutt’s friends creeping around the garage. Their vile presence left a greasy aura that no amount of cleaning product could scrub away. But Rey generally ignored them. They existed as part of the garage’s biome, but were generally harmless, only adding to the garage’s “sketch factor” as Finn liked to call it. As long as they kept their hands to themselves, Rey could pretend they weren’t there.

But today they did not keep their hands to themselves, no. When one of them tried to touch her, tried to pinch her ass with filthy, aggressive fingers, Rey snapped. She slapped the bastard across the face. His cheek was left a stinging red and emblazoned with a grease stained handprint. Rey’s own, personal, Scarlet Letter.

Predictably, Plutt threw a fit. Rey only avoided being fired by promising to come in on the weekend and work overtime at a docked wage. Even so, Rey had to bite her tongue as Plutt levied vile insults at her. The entire exchange made her feel dirty, but she fought off the urge to scream out her anger at her volatile boss. Instead she tried to quiet her mind, and just let the insults roll off of her. She focused on her purpose, why she worked at the garage in the first place.

_You need the money. You’re saving up for art school. You need the fucking money. It’ll be worth it when you get through art school._

And so Rey pushed through. It was what she was good at. Surviving at all costs. Pride was nice but it didn’t pay the bills and Rey knew when to accept the degradation and role with the punches. And while Plutt was a bully, he wasn’t a particularly inventive one. Anything he said to her she’d heard a thousand times prior from mouths even crueler than Plutt’s. 

Foster homes were like that.

The younger kids were usually alright, but by the time they got to be eleven or twelve most kids became jaded. They knew they were unlikely to be adopted and were suspicious of kindness. And with that suspicion came a meanness. They didn’t trust each other not to steal clothes or possessions, and so frequently kids would learn to strike first and take all they could. 

And those were just the kids. Frequently the adults were worse. 

Rey learned to always lock her door at night. If she could, she’d push a chair under the door handle to keep anyone from entering from the outside. There was even one house where she started sleeping in the closet, curled in on herself in a ball. It was safer than sleeping in the bed.

But Rey can’t hide from Plutt as much as she wants to. Her job is her lifeline, the only thing keeping her living under a roof. She has to put up with the taunts, the lewd comments. At least, until something better comes around. 

She’s been waiting for something better to come around for almost three years.

As she leaves the garage, Rey looks up at the sky. It’s blustery and overcast, the kind of spring day in Chicago that could easily be early winter in any other city. Rey shivers, hugging herself as she walks the half mile to the diner. 

She knows that Rose and Finn would do whatever they could to help her if she decided to quit. They’d even offered to let her stay with them if it came down to it. But Rey couldn’t put them out like that. Finn was living with his boyfriend, Poe, in a tiny studio apartment, and Rose was living with her older sister, Paige, and her husband. To take on Rey would just be another burden that her friends didn’t deserve. 

Anyways Rey couldn’t let herself depend on her friends’ kindness. Not in any meaningful way.

But as Rey walks towards _Maz’s_ , she can’t help but wish it was different. She wishes she could tell Plutt to go fuck himself. She wishes she didn’t have to work 18 hours a day. She wishes Obi was alive and that she’d gone to SAIC and was spending her days in an airy, well-lit studio, surrounded by canvases and the smell of turp and oil paint. 

Short of that, she wishes for smaller things. A new pair of shoes that would cradle her swollen feet so that the walk to the diner didn’t feel like such a treck. A _real_ spring day with actual sunshine that wasn't quashed by rain or snow. A warm blanket to wrap herself in for a few moments. Someone to hold her close. Someone who wouldn’t leave. 

Rey walks into _Maz’s_ through the back door and immediately beelines for the staff bathroom. Her shift doesn’t start for 30 minutes, but she doesn’t have time to go back to her apartment and change. Still, she knows she can’t serve food in grease stained overalls. She’s just about to open the door to the bathroom when she hears Maz call out to her from the kitchen.

“Rey, dear, would you come here for a second?”

Rey walks into the kitchen and nods to Finn who’s working at the stove in the back. His eyes are narrowed in concentration as he tries to flip pancakes. His one, true nemesis.

Rey finally spots Maz near the front of the kitchen, the tiny woman having been hidden from sight behind a stack of dishes. Maz stands near the door to the dining room, her wide brown eyes almost comically large behind her huge, round spectacles. Rey has to wonder if Maz is allowed to drive. With glasses like that, there’s no way she’s not legally blind.

“Sure, but do you mind waiting a second, I just wanted to change.”

“I think it would be better if you just came over now, dear. Someone’s been waiting for you.”

Rey cocks her head to the side, confused.

“Who?”

Maz gives Rey a mischievous grin and tilts her head, gesturing for Rey to come over and peak out into the dining room. 

Rey walks over slowly, feeling as if somethings about to pop out and bite her. She doesn’t like surprises. And whatever this is feels like a surprise.

When Rey gets to the door, Maz pushes it open a few inches so that Rey can peak her head out. At first, she doesn’t see anything unusual. A few of the tables are occupied by regulars. She sees Kaydel, one of the other waitresses, buzzing between booths, grabbing a patron’s fallen silver wear. But Rey doesn’t recognize anyone else, and no one seems to be trying to get her attention. 

Then she sees him, and her mind goes temporarily blank. The blood rushes from her face.

In one of the back booths, the huge, dark-haired man from the day before sits with a cup of coffee. He doesn’t seem to be drinking it, his hands are in his lap. But as if he senses her eyes, his head jolts upwards and suddenly she’s not looking at the top of his head, but right into his large, dark eyes.

Rey makes a sound of shock and backs away from the door as quickly as possible only to bump into Finn, who seemingly has abandoned his pancake quest in favor of gossip.

“What the hell is he doing here?” Finn exclaims, looking like he’s about ready to storm out into the dining room and fight the guy. Rey might let him.

But before Rey can say anything Maz interjects.

“That nice young man came in here looking for Rey. I told him you weren’t working for a few hours, but he insisted on staying.”

“What the fuck does he want with Rey?”

Maz gives him a look.

“Don’t take that tone with me, Mister. I didn’t ask.” She turns to peer up at Rey, her face alight with quiet whimsy. “I figured that was between Rey and the gentleman.” 

Rey groans.

“Hell, I don’t know what he wants. Last time he was here he was an utter prick.”

Maz cocks her head to the side.

“Perhaps he’s here to apologize then?”

Rey stills for a second. She thinks back to yesterday, to the utter disdain in his voice when he told her it was _none of her business, sweetheart_. She thinks about his eyes and how hard they were as they bore into hers. 

“I don’t think he’s the kind of guy who apologizes.”

Maz gives Rey a look, inscrutable and sphinxlike.

“Why not go and see? Maybe he’ll surprise you.”

Finn stammers in a way that suggests he’s about to interject.

“And of course,” Maz adds, “we’ll watch out and make sure the boy doesn’t do anything untoward.”

For a moment Rey ponders her options. She knows that if she really doesn’t want to talk to him, she can tell Maz and Maz would let her hide out in the kitchen until he left. Knows Maz would even force him to leave immediately if Rey asked her to. She doesn’t _have_ to confront him. But Rey trusts her instincts to tell her when people are dangerous. And he didn’t seem dangerous the night before, not really. An asshole, yes. Pretentious, sure. But dangerous? No.

Rey squares her shoulders and turns away from Maz, towards the door. She steels herself for a moment before stepping out. She calls out behind her to Finn and Maz.

“Watch my back.”

* * *

Earlier that day, when Kylo walked into _Maz’s_ , he was clearly nervous. Apprehension draped over him like a well-worn coat. He knew what he was doing could be considered creepy. He knew returning to ask about the girl wasn’t “normal” behavior. But he desperately wanted to talk to her. His fingers clutched at the wrinkled drawing in his pocket. 

Hell, if he was creepy, then so was she for drawing him in the first place. He was within his right to come and confront her. 

Still Ben knew he could be intimidating. At six foot three he looked down on most people, and he’d been told on more than one occasion by Phasma that his “resting bitch face” was mildly terrifying. Usually, this was advantageous and meant he could avoid small talk. But he knew the situation called for something more delicate than his usual, gruff approach to conversation. He knew it was unlikely that the girl would be happy to see him after his snappish behavior the day before. But he needed to talk to her. 

_Anyways, she may not even be here…_

Kylo stood near the entrance by a sign that said, “Please Wait to Be Seated.” He tried to look unassuming as he began to scan the diner. It was a task he was sorely unequipped for.

Despite the great number of people who filled the diner, the girl didn’t seem to be among them. His brow furrowed in concentration as his eyes backtracked over the diner. But the girl did not appear. However, just as he was about to start walking around the diner in pursuit of the mystery artist, Kylo was clocked by a bouncy blonde waitress. Her expression was friendly, if not mildly concerned. Kylo tried to school his features into something approaching charming. He didn’t want her to know that he was just a moment away from looking under the tables for a girl he’d spoken to once.

Smiling, the waitress waltzed in his direction.

“Hi! My name is Kaydel. Table for one?”

Kylo nodded. He figured asking about the girl off the bat would be a bit much. Better to try and order something first before he asked about her.

Kaydel led him to a booth near the back, adjacent to his booth from the previous night. She placed a menu in front of him and smiled, brightly telling him that she’d be back soon to take his drink order. Kylo stopped her abruptly. 

“Coffee.” Kylo internally grimaced. He needed to try and be friendlier if he didn’t want to scare the staff. 

He gave the waitress a pained attempt at a smile. 

“Please.”

She smiled back, seemingly nonplussed by the constipated look on Kylo’s face. She cheerily told Kylo she’d be back in a jiff and bounced off. As soon as she was out of earshot, Kylo let out a quiet groan and his head fell into one of his hands, his elbow propped on the table. The longer he was in the diner, the more slapdash his plan felt. The girl might not even be there, and he didn’t want to risk asking about her only for the staff to kick him out or warn her off from coming to work. And even if she was there, what was he going to say? “Hello Miss, I’m sorry I was such an asshole yesterday. It wasn’t you I’m always like that. By the way I saw your drawing of my face and it made me feel emotions I don’t want to think about. Anyways, do you want to come work for me?” 

Kylo flopped back against the booth, his hand moving to rub between his eyes as they snapped close. He wanted to be an adult about things, wanted to give her a clean pitch as to why she should come work in the shop. But every time he thought about what to say, he thought back to the girls hurt expression from the day before. Her eyes had gone round after the first sharp syllable rang from his lips. While she had quickly remanded her expression to something approaching hostile, he knew that he had hurt her feelings. 

When she’d first spoken to him, she’d been complimentary and curious. Her eyes had flashed with excitement and her lips had curved into an eager smile when she asked about his tattoo. And he blew it with his big fat mouth like he always did.

He couldn’t help but think that his father would laugh at him for his faux pau. He’d tease him, say “Damn son, didn’t I teach you how to talk to girls? You really screwed the pooch on that one didn’t ya kid?” 

Kylo tried to put the thought away, but it was hard. He didn’t want to think about his dad, not now. He had enough on his plate with this fool’s errand of getting this girl to come work for him. Still, the feelings of self-flagellation about his behavior from the day before wouldn’t leave him be. He felt like a live wire, and he couldn’t shut off the current.

Kaydel returned with his coffee and asked what Kylo wanted to eat. 

“I’m just here for a place to work. Just keep the coffee flowing,” Kylo stiffly replied, his voice higher than normal. Kylo was almost thankful his voice hadn’t cracked like a goddamn teenager.

Kaydel gave Kylo a look that looked almost sympathetic. Maybe she thought he was some awkward man-child who couldn’t talk to women. Kylo felt his eye twitch with anger. 

_You’re an idiot, you’re a goddamn idiot. Act like a normal person you fucker. Get your shit together. You’re an adult man, you’re a man, act like one._

Kylo looked down at his coffee and muttered out a “thanks” as Kaydel walked away. His body, tense from the interaction, deflated into the booth. Kylo closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. He could calm down, he could. He just had to come up with a plan.

He’d wait for a few hours, pretend to work, drink some coffee. If she didn’t show up, he’d try again later this week. He looked around the diner, looking to the tables along the wall where a handful of students seemed to be working.

_Fuck you’re an idiot, you didn’t bring a laptop. How the fuck are you supposed to look like you’re working without a laptop?_

Kylo groaned to himself and took a sip from his cup of coffee. He grimaced at the taste, but didn’t want to call the waitress back to ask for cream. He resigned himself to drinking it black as penance for his lack of foresight.

Still, he needed a way to bide the time. He regretted not bringing a sketch book. At least then he could have been productive, maybe sketched out some pieces he’d been contracted for. In the absence of actual work though, Kylo was at somewhat of a loss. Resigned, he took out his phone from his jacket pocket.

Kylo was not what you would call a social media butterfly. Since the fall out with his family and dropping out of school, even the skeletal accounts which had only born his name and birthday had been deleted. Now, Kylo’s only social media presence was the tattoo parlor’s Instagram, linked neatly with their website and run almost entirely by Phasma. 

With a sigh, Kylo began to scroll through the studio’s profile. It had been a long time since he’d looked at it, generally happy to let Phasma run the page, and he had to admit it looked good. The photos were sleek shots, unfiltered, and the account had an impressive follow count. Kylo couldn’t help but think that he’d have to tell Phasma she was doing a good job (though, she probably already knew that).

Mixed in with the shots of tattoos was a smattering of action shots of the studio’s staff. Phasma with a piercing gun giving the camera a saucy wink. Hux bent over some guy’s leg at work on a biomech piece. There was even a pic of Mitika manning the front desk giving the camera a sheepish grin. Kylo’s face, however, was conspicuously absent from the page. The only acknowledgment of his existence was the #kyloren captioning the photos of his work. 

Kylo scanned the comments of a more recent tattoo, one of his signature black and grey pieces. A series of photos showed a viper coiled around a client’s forearm. It wasn’t his most inspired piece, but it was cleanly done, the lines stark and the design well executed. The comments were fawning as per usual, with a number of individuals begging for Kylo to tattoo them. It was almost irritating, but Kylo couldn’t truly be bothered by it. 

He wasn’t in the business to please people, no, he was in the business to make Art with a capital A. But a part of his brain still buzzed happily at the adoration. He may be a fuck up, hell, his family might not respect his work, but people payed thousands for a spot on his waitlist, for a chance to get _his_ art tattooed on them. No matter how much he fucked up, it meant he was good for something.

But even without the fawning of his Instagram followers, Kylo knew he was talented. He didn’t need the awards or the internet fame, Kylo knew he was skilled the same way he knew the pull of gravity. He didn’t need evidence; he could feel the truth of it in his marrow. It was a self-assuredness that had gotten him into trouble in his past life.

_You work too much with your heart, you don’t use your brain. You’ll never be as good as you think you are until you learn the rules._

Kylo snorted at the memory. The rules of art were made to be broken, made to be rewritten. It wasn’t his fault that Luke didn’t understand that. Let him have the old masters, Kylo would rather let them die.

Kylo closed the app and pulled out the scrap from his pocket, the sketch the girl had done. _Luke would have thrown this away._ He knew it, knew it when he looked at the rough lines and uneven shading. Luke would have thought it a subpar sketch, lacking the formality that he demanded from his students work. It was laughable to Kylo that Luke could be so blind. His fingers couldn’t help but trace the shape of his own face. The sketch was good. It felt real to Kylo, like any moment he would see his own eyes blink back at him. It felt alive, and he wanted to know what else the girl could do.

“Well if it isn’t Ben Solo. I haven’t seen you in a long time, boy.”

Kylo jolted out of his reverie with a start. Despite Kylo being seated, his head was only eye level with the short woman.

“Maz.” Kylo sighed. He had hoped his intuition was wrong, hoped that the diner was run by a _different_ Maz. 

_Because there are so many Maz’s you moron._

Maz looked Kylo up and down, clearly cataloging the changes in his appearance from the last time she’d seen him. Making a list of things to report back to his mother. 

Maz was, if nothing else, a _yente_. 

Kylo tracked her eyes as they scanned his tattooed forearms, her eyes narrowing slightly. She was trying to hide it, but she was concerned. He tried to pull his sleeves down as nonchalantly as he could, praying that she hadn’t gotten too good of a look. Knowing that he was covered in tattoos was bad enough, but if she knew what they were of she’d likely be apoplectic. 

Maz’s eyes shot up from his arms to his face. Kylo could feel the blood rushing to his ears from embarrassment and panic, and was momentarily thankful for his shaggy hair. 

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen you.” Despite their faces being at the same level, Kylo felt as if the woman was looking down at him, like he was a child again, his hand caught in the cookie jar.

“Uh, yeah, a while.” Kylo didn’t know what else to say. He hoped she’d just go away but knows in his gut that this conversation is far from over.

“I hear you’re working in a tattoo shop, boy. Your parents are worried.” Her eyes flash behind thick glass.

Kylo stiffened, his eyes narrowing.

“My life isn’t any of their business.”

Maz shook her head.

“You can keep telling yourself that child, but you can’t escape your past. They want to see you.” 

Kylo snorted and Maz’s eyes tightened fractionally. 

“Believe me or don’t boy, they want to see you.”

“Maybe I don’t want to see them.” 

Even without looking at her, Kylo knew that Maz was giving him a disappointed look. The seconds ticked by as Kylo felt her eyes boring into him, but Kylo couldn’t make himself look back at her. Eventually, he heard the old woman sigh.

“Well boy, I can’t make you speak to them if you don’t want to. But you should know that all they want is for you to be happy.” She paused for a second and waited for him to look at her. Kylo met her eyes fleetingly before looking away. 

He felt like storming out. Felt like flipping the table and smashing his mug. But his anger wasn’t directed at Maz. Resigned and feeling like a disappointment, he could only nod his head at her in a halfhearted acknowledgment. No matter what Maz said, there was no way his parents wanted anything to do with him. They would never respect his life choices. They couldn’t. Not after the gala. 

Maz scanned over his face again, as if trying to pry open his skull and pick out his thoughts. That was how Maz always made him feel, even as a child. Like he was under a microscope. 

“Well then boy, I take it you’re not here to rehash old times. What’re you doing here?”

Kylo looked down at the paper in his hands. He wondered to himself what he _was_ doing there? The bluster with which he had entered the diner had abandoned him. But before he could say anything, Maz’s eyes fixed on the scrap of paper. 

Her face tightened for a moment in confusion. Then the wrinkles of her brow smoothed over with understanding. Her eyes looked huge behind her glasses as she beamed at him.

“Ah, you’re looking for Rey, are you?”

Kylo didn’t know what to say. Assuming Rey was the artist, then the answer was yes. But he didn’t know how to explain his foolhardy quest to Maz, nor did he want to invite her questions. Her generic scrutiny was more than enough of an interrogation without adding anything extra.

Kylo shrugged. Maz gave him a look that made clear she wasn’t amused by his non-answer.

“Well if you are, she’s not in for a few hours.”

Kylo felt his body curl in on itself slightly. His posture slipped ever so slightly from rigid and anxious to somber and dejected. It was enough of a transformation that Maz snorted, her earlier question answered.

“Don’t worry lover boy, you can wait here if you want. Plenty of coffee to go around.” 

The old woman took a moment to adjust her glasses. Behind her eyes Kylo could see a slight shift. This was a woman he’d known since the day he was born, a woman who had at times been closer to him than his actual mother. But the look behind her eyes was something he had only seen levied at others. It was the look that a mother bear gives strangers who get too close to the den. A look that quietly said “approach with caution, for here be dragons”.

“Rey’s had a hard life.” Maz’s eyes bore into his. “It would be a shame if you were to hurt her in any way.”

Kylo stammered. “Uh, you don’t have to worry about that Maz.”

“You say that now boy, but I know your father, and you Solo boys wreak havoc on the women you trail after and—"

“I’m not interested in her that way.” Kylo could feel his face turning red. 

He knew that his statement wasn’t exactly true. While he didn’t return to the diner with any kind of romantic overture in mind, he couldn’t help but remember his thoughts from the night before. The girl – _Rey_ – had made him feel things he didn’t quite want to address. Thoughts that were less than pure. Kylo’s face burned brighter. By this point, he was sure his ears were crimson.

“I see.” Her eyes made it clear that she _did_ see, to Kylo’s mortification. She stared at Kylo’s face for a second while he nervously tried to play it cool. Whatever she saw made her eyes softened.

“Just be careful, Ben. You’re a good boy.” Her hand lightly cupped his cheek like he was some fragile thing. Kylo’s tongue felt thick, and he gulped down air as his mouth felt flooded with saliva, his head heavy with emotions he couldn’t quite parse.

Kylo looked down, away from her face. He couldn’t make eye contact with this woman who had always treated him like a son, a woman who he’d almost forgot had also been abandoned when he left his old life behind. 

“I will.”

With a small, sad smile, Maz patted his cheek gently.

“I’ll send Rey over before her shift starts. In the meantime, I’ll send over some nosh to your table. You’re too skinny.” Her lips turned up in a slight smirk as she began to walk away. Kylo began to relax, feeling like the confrontation was coming to an end, but Maz turned to look at him once more. Her slight smile turned almost impish. 

“Also, a word of advice: figure out what you’re going to say before she gets here, boy. That girl doesn’t pull punches, and if you’re your father’s son, you’re apt to put your foot in your mouth.”

With that final word, Maz walked away towards the kitchen. Kylo was left with only his thoughts and a cup of lukewarm coffee. 

As uncomfortable as the conversation had been, Kylo knew Maz was right, about one thing if nothing else. Kylo was apt to put his foot in his mouth. But unlike Maz, Kylo knew that no amount of planning could fix that. 

_My father’s fucking son alright._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it obvious I'm salty about Chicago weather? Because I am.
> 
> Anyways, like Kylo, my heart goes a little bit fluttery whenever I get kudos or comments. Thanks to anyone who commented last chapter, your messages did a lot to quell my anxiety about never having written fic before. So while I'm still anxious as hell, I feel a little better knowing ya'll are out there enjoying it.
> 
> Anyways, the next chapter should be up in a week or two. Again, with finals things are a bit up in the air. But let me know if you have any thoughts/comments/questions/ideas/etc. Your comments fuel my will to write (and also my tendency to procrastinate on my studying, but I digress).


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok sorry for the delay! Finals sucked and then I needed a few days to recover. Pass fail or not, law school professors seek to inflict suffering. Going forward, I should be on something closer to a weekly schedule.
> 
> Anyways, sorry for any mistake, I don't got a beta, just little ol' me. But let me know what you think! Your comments and kudos literally gave me the will to write more after submitting 20k words of legal nonsense.

Rey walks out into the diner. As soon as the kitchen door swings shut, the man looks up, eyes locking on her rigid form. She feels like a deer caught under the scrutiny of a predator, and the confidence she had felt back in the kitchen evaporates with a shiver of panic. It’s a freeze response she frequently had to repress in her younger years. Now, it only happened on occasion, a vestige of a childhood where safety was a far off dream, and a reminder that big men like the one in the booth aren’t to be trusted.

After a moment, Rey unfreezes. Her quivering muscles relax, and her body commits to the rote process of walking. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds that she had stood still. Even so, under the dark haired man’s watchful stare, she’s self-conscious of the reflex.

As she circles around the counter, it occurs to Rey that she should have changed out of her garage clothes before confronting the man. She suppresses the urge to pick at the grease under her nails, or to fuss with her overalls. Instead, she sets her face in a resolute expression, endeavoring to exude calm and control. Her fingers curl in on themselves in a nervous fist.

_Pull it together. You’re a bad ass and if he tries anything, you’ll stab him in the eye socket._

Still, as she walks towards him, she wonders if she _could_ stab him even if she wanted to. He’s massive, even sitting down. Her eyes flit to his hands where they’re folded on the table. They’re huge, almost like bear paws. If he really wanted to pin her to the ground—if he wanted to _hurt_ her—he definitely could. Just looking at him, she knows that he isn’t the kind of man she could fight off easily. Not like the school-house bullies she was used to fighting. She feels something stir in her gut. It could be fear, but she doesn’t quite know.

Before she quite realizes that she’s crossed the diner, she’s standing next to his booth. Her eyes shift from his hands to his face, locking on his stygian gaze. He doesn’t look angry. Instead his brows are furrowed, as if she’s a puzzle and he’s desperately looking for the last piece. It’s unnerving. But this time, Rey doesn’t freeze. She knows it’s too late to escape this confrontation. And where flight isn’t an option, Rey’s always going to fight like hell.

“What the hell is your deal?” The words come out before Rey can think the better of them.

The man’s brows shoot up. His lips quirk in what could almost be a smile. 

“Excuse me?” Deep as it is, his voice lilts in amusement. 

Rey snaps.

“I said, what the fuck is your deal. Seriously, you’re an utter prick to me last night and now you’re showing up at my workplace asking for me? What kind of psychopath are you?” 

By the end of her beratement, the man’s eyes are blown wide. His half-smile falls away, and his Adam’s apple twitches, as if he’s taken a nervous swallow. After a moment his gaze shifts downward, away from Rey for the first time since she walked into the diner. His eyes are fixed on his hands where they’re ringing themselves on the table, the thick fingers of his right hand nervously fiddling with the fingers of his left. Rey’s eyes can’t help but follow as the muscles of his hands and forearm clench.

“I suppose,” he grumbles, “that I deserve that.” 

He sighs again, his hands unfolding. His right hand reaches up to rake his fingers through his dark mane of hair. Rey forces herself to look the man in the eye even while he averts his gaze.

“You think?” Rey huffs. Her arms move to cross themselves in front of her chest in a gesture she’d normally scold herself for as being childish. She’s sure she looks unbearably young: arms crossed, dirty overalls, grease marked face.

The man looks up at her again, his air imploring. Despite her appearance, his face has taken on a serious countenance and his eyes are wide and clear as they stare back at her.

“Look, I’m not good at apologizing,” his voice is strained, as if each word is accompanied by the pulling of a tooth, “but I’m sorry.” After a moment of silence, he quietly adds, “I was an asshole.” 

With his final acknowledgement, his jaw clenches and his eyes flit away. He looks almost resigned. 

Rey stares at his face. Rey wants to stay mad, she really does. She thinks back to that smirk when she first walked up to the booth, and a part of her wants to throw his coffee down his shirt. But looking down at the man, she can only feel a twinge of remorse for yelling at him.

“You’re forgiven, I guess.” Her words come out slowly, caution girding each syllable.

The man’s eyes move back to hers and she can feel him scanning her face. Whatever he sees seems to satisfy his nerves, and his whole frame seems to unclench. He sits up straighter and his lips unpurse, a light breath huffing out. Somehow the relief of being forgiven has made him seem even larger, even within the confines of the booth.

“Thank you.” He says it with a light nod. “But,” he pauses for a second, “I didn’t come here just to apologize.” He gestures to the seat across from him.

Rey narrows her eyes but doesn’t move to sit.

“So, what do you want then?”

He cocks his head to the side and his hair drifts into his eyes. 

“Right now? For you to sit down.” 

Rey glares.

“Please.” 

Sighing, Rey crosses over and sits down, gingerly sliding into the booth across from him. 

“Kylo.”

Rey looks up and their eyes meet.

“What?” 

The man’s jaw twitches.

“My name. It’s Kylo,” he pauses for a moment, “and your name is Rey.”

Rey feels her back go stiff as she sits up straighter. Just as fast as she had sat down, she’s ready to sprint out of there away from the hulking, plutonic man who knows her name. 

“Uh how do you—”

“Maz told me.” The man interrupts her nervously, clearly having realized that Rey was just moments from a complete freak out.

Rey relaxes, feeling almost lightheaded from the sudden rush and release of nerves. Still, she thinks back to the men at Plutt’s garage and their grubby hands and wandering eyes and feels a chill on her neck thinking about them showing up at the diner.

“Oh…I guess I’ll have to have a talk with her about telling my name to strangers.” 

Kylo gives a dour chuckle.

“Don’t worry too much about it, I’m not that strange. At least, not around here.” He doesn’t elaborate, and Rey feels like she’s missing a joke.

“Anyways, sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like a creep. But I did want to talk to you.”

Staring at Kylo, Rey’s struck by how odd he is, jumping back and forth between nervous recantations and confident demands almost automatically; stuck at the crossroads of anxious caution and wild impulse. It strikes Rey that for as big as he is, he doesn’t seem at ease in his body. Like a wolf trying to pass itself off as a dog, and biting its own tail to keep from biting someone else. Even so, whatever earlier apprehension Rey had felt has passed. Predator or not, Kylo’s eyes are almost kind. 

And so, Rey gives Kylo a slight smile. 

“Shoot. What’s up?”

* * *

Kylo breaths out a huff of relief and his hands move to his jacket pocket. For as much as he’d tried to prepare something to say, in the moment he goes with impulse. Gingerly, he pulls out the drawing she had done of him the day before. Rey’s face freezes for an instant before a hand reaches up to cover her face in embarrassment.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry.” The words come out in a quick sputter, muffled behind her palm. For as nervous as Kylo had been about the encounter, it hadn’t occurred to him that she might be _embarrassed_ at having been caught drawing him.

“It’s alright.” Kylo’s eyes soften. He didn’t mean to make her feel uncomfortable. His hand twitches and for a moment he contemplates softly pulling her hand away from her face and getting her to look at him. Instead, he grips his knee.

“Still, I’m so embarrassed.” She says it as if it’s not evident in the soft blush of her cheeks.

“Like I said, it’s fine.” Kylo steels himself for the big moment. “But I wanted to ask you something.”

Rey’s hand lowers from her face. Her face remains flushed, but she seems to have mostly recovered from the embarrassment.

“What?”

“Would you like a job?”

The words tumble from Kylo’s mouth before he can think to preface them with an explanation.

Rey’s eyes widen almost comically. 

“Pardon?”

Kylo sighs and looks at Rey’s face, tracking her shocked expression.

“I’m offering you a job.” He says it matter-of-factly.

“I have a job. I have multiple jobs.” Her normally sweetly accented voice stumbles over the words in a kind of stutter.

Kylo snorts. 

“Clearly.” Kylo’s eyes do a quick pass over Rey’s grease stained clothes, trying not to linger too long where the zip of her overalls has begun to spill open. “Regardless, I’m offering you a better job.” Kylo fixes his gaze on Rey’s face. The look of shock has faded, and now only puzzlement lingers. Rey bites her lip and meets Kylo’s eyes.

“What kind of job?”

Kylo’s throat feels dry as he peers back into her questioning eyes. He wants to catalog the exact hue so he can replicate it in ink, but is acquiescent to the knowledge that he won’t come close.

“A job as my apprentice. I’m a tattoo artist, I run a shop a few blocks down.” Kylo sits back in his chair. He wants to look confident, wants to look like he knows what he’s doing, even as his skin feels too tight under her gaze.

Rey’s eyes remain on Kylo’s face but turn unfocused. She looks like she’s lost in a daydream, Kylo thinks. Lost in a trance. She bites her lower lip, her eyes refocusing on his, and Kylo feels his heart pulse in his chest. When she finally speaks, her voice is thin, as if she’s out of breath.

“Why?”

“Why what?” 

Her eyes narrow slightly.

“Why offer me a job? I’m just a waitress who drew a picture of you and got your order wrong. Why me?”

Kylo looks at Rey. He scans across the constellation of freckles on her nose and cheeks. Her lower lip is plump and reddened from where she’d worried it between her teeth. Her face is guileless and young and beautiful and Kylo doesn’t know what to say. 

_Why her? Why me?_ he can’t help but think.

Kylo’s eyes fall; he can’t keep looking at her. His eyes linger on a coffee stain on the menu in front of him, and his thoughts rewind to the hours spent waiting for Rey at the diner. He thinks back to the photos on the parlor’s Instagram—the sharp lines of vipers and skulls and falcons rendered in neat perfection by his hand—and the hundreds of comments begging for his attention. Further into the tumult of his thoughts, in a dark corner, he hears the scabrous praise of his old master. _My worthy apprentice, heir apparent to Vader. Where there was conflict I now sense resolved, where there was weakness, strength._

Kylo looks back up at Rey, his eyes hard, his voice sharp and analytical. 

“Because you need a teacher. You have potential but you’re untrained. Your lines are shaky and your shading needs work, and I can help.” 

In a flash, the openness on Rey’s face dissipates. Her nostrils flare and her eyes tighten to slits.

“Excuse me?!”

Kylo looks at the sketch and points. His tone is authoritative but almost bored, as if he’s reciting from memory.

“See here? You needed to make this section darker, that way the highlights over here will pop more. And here—”

“Who the hell are you to tell me how to draw?”

Kylo looks up and his eyes lock with Rey’s. He can see the fury in her face, and he wants to draw her like this, as some sort of avenging angel. Perhaps as a huntress of old, bow and arrow proffered in her hands like Diana. But her anger feels remote to him, like he’s watching her through a television screen. Beautiful and unreal.

“Someone very good at what he does. Someone who can show you how to make real art.”

Rey sucks in an angry breath, leaning back into the booth as if trying to get as far away from Kylo as possible.

“Screw you, arsehole. What could you know about art? You do fucking _tattoos._ ” The word “tattoos” is cruelly spat from her pretty little mouth. It drips with utter distain and Kylo feels a sharp twinge in his chest . The part of Kylo’s mind that had been observing Rey’s anger with an academic detachment is choked with indignant heat. 

“Tattoos are real art, sweetheart. They’re more real than anything you’d be assigned at art school.” 

Rey almost snorts. Her expression is sour and her eyes stare daggers, reflecting a sharp green.

“And what do you know about art school?” 

Kylo’s eyes narrow.

“I know that it’s a waste of money and your time is better spent doing literally anything else.” 

Rey scoffs.

“Art school is not a waste of money.” 

Kylo’s laugh is loud and humorless, a deep booming thing that feels hollow coming out of his chest.

“You don’t really want to go to art school, do you?” His eyes find Rey’s seething face, and Kylo tastes bile at the back of his throat. 

“Art school is a fucking scam. It’s a classicist jerk circle. All you’ll going to learn is to worship at the altar of painters who’ve been dead for centuries, and for what? A pat on the back and for your professor to call you a ‘good girl’ all while you continue producing mediocre work? A degree doesn’t make you an artist sweetheart, making art makes you an artist. Lesson number one.” 

By the end of his speech, Kylo knows he’s frothing at the mouth. He wants to grab Rey by her angry little shoulders and shake her until she realizes the truth of his words. Going to art school is pursuing the fruit of the poisonous tree, and Kylo was enraged at the idea of Rey choking herself on it. 

Rey stands abruptly from the table. Her face is flushed with righteousness as she looks down at Kylo.

“And you’re so sure you’d be a better teacher? Fuck you.”

Before Kylo has the opportunity to respond, Rey storms off towards the kitchen. 

Kylo’s muscles tense. He wants to go after her. He wants to scream at her, make her listen to him. But the further she gets from him the more the red fades from his vision. His thoughts which had been whirring in an enraged cacophony fall to the floor in a tired and regretful heap. 

Kylo’s eyes drop from the door Rey had so abruptly rushed out of and down to the drawing of his face where it sits unassumingly on the table. He thinks back to the day before, to Rey’s cheerful question about his tattoo, about the falcon sliced open by his own sins.

Kylo sighs and picks up the drawing in one hand. He wants to take it with him when he leaves, but it feels tainted somehow.

“Sir, I’d appreciate it if you paid your bill and left.” Kylo looks up. The waitress from earlier—Kaydel, he vaguely remembers—is giving him a look that’s far more hostile than he would have expected from the bubbly waitress.

She hands him his check and a pen and walks off, her bouncy gate suppressed and stiff. Clearly, he’s overstayed his welcome. He looks down at the bill: twenty bucks for his coffee refills and a grilled cheese. 

_So much for the family discount._

Kylo knows the up charge is the least of his problems. He’d be lucky if Maz let him back into the diner ever again. 

Kylo pulls out his wallet, ready to fork over his card, when his fingers catch not on a bill but on a firm card stock edge. Mindlessly, he pulls out the business card. It’s all black, from the text to the cardstock. The words, rather than printed, are stamped into the thick paper, the letters outlined by mere shadow.

**  
First Order Ink  
(773) 202 5862  
1060 W Addison St, Chicago, IL 60613  
**

Kylo’s eyes shift from the business card to menu with his face on it. Something in him shifts. He smiles down at the card, and picks up the pen.

* * *

Five minutes later, Kylo leaves the diner. He takes the pen with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tldr: both Rey and Kylo are a little horny and kind of feral and need to learn communication skills.
> 
> Points to anyone who knows what the First Order phone number and address are. Looking at you, Chicago natives. Please don't call the number though, I don't wanna get sued. And don't show up at the address, they're not open because of COVID.
> 
> Also, I don't know anything about art school, I'm just a dumb little law student, don't hate me. Kylo's just got some serious angst.
> 
> Btw, inspo. for Vader is J.M.W. Turner


End file.
